Phase II - What is SoulJahm?

Now seems a good time to have another look at what SoulJahm is.

When Kate and I set off for Europe in October 2010, all we had in our heads was "we must go to Europe".  It was ringing out so clearly in us both - there was no choice.  In the background we knew Music would come into the picture somewhere down the line but we weren't thinking that way as we left.  We never took any instruments or prepared in any way for Music.  Originally, it was all about Europe.

It was about 5 months after we landed in Barcelona that October before SoulJahm came to life.  Beginning with a ukulele and melodica, a different type of song began to come.  Songs directly from our current living experience.  Our feeling on it all was quite simple.  Put the songs and videos out as invitations or messengers to bring something of this Truth to people.  It didn't matter that we were a bit rough and ready - it was important to just put them out.  Maybe people would be curious about it all - the songs, the journey, how we lived.  Some people were curious but didn't hang around.  The vision we saw was that slowly we might connect with some people who could see something in what we were singing about, how we were living.  Some of those people might want to be part of it and so with more people, we could all create more and the whole thing might rise exponentially.  Not for any agenda or purpose other than as an environment for people who felt the same about the world as we did.  People who somehow always felt the way we were taught to live was not right, that something was wrong or missing.  Kate and I felt this way since we were children and could never shake it off.  We were trying to say, "you can do this, you don't have to accept the way things are, don't try and change the world, just change your own life, just do what you feel is right and prove it can be done".  That is enough.

One of the saddest things about Kate's death is we felt we were only getting started.  We never managed to fulfil a lot of the things we intended to and the saddest part was that we just couldn't connect with people.  We found time and again, as long as you remain on superficial ground, the known and comfortable, people will happily spend time and relate with you but the moment you try to make any real connection people back off.  Everybody is quite content in their mundaneness but we never gave up.  Nobody wants direct contact with life, direct experience.  On a few occasions we made some breakthroughs but they were always rare events and quickly it was back to business as usual.

When humans sing together something happens.  That is direct communion.  We know it but we can't explain what it is.  It has a different quality to going out for a nice meal together or sitting have a drink or whatever other way humans usually entertain themselves.  When we sing it is direct and immediate.  You don't really know what is happening, it just feels good.  When we play instruments together, even if its just some shakers and a guitar, there is something ALIVE there.  Or spontaneously taking photos, being involved in any way when true creativity is in action.  When we sit and discuss life and reality, question it and question ourselves, in a genuine and sincere way there is something in that we don't get when we sit and talk about the World Cup or our families or anything else belonging to the mundane and dead.  When you speak about what you already know, it is dead.  It has a dead quality to it but when you check out what you don't know and explore that you come alive.  The difficulty is to get to that aliveness you have to become vulnerable and in this society we are trained from a young age to hide vulnerability at all costs.  It is seen as a weakness.  When you don't know yourself anymore that is being vulnerable but nobody seems to want to go to that place.

Kate and I were always looking for those moments in our interactions with others.  Everyday we could sing together for 2 hours and find great joy in it, never getting tired of it.  We wanted to share and encourage that simplicity in others.  You don't need to go out sight-seeing, looking at buildings and dead stuff, or to the pub, you can find Life here in the simplicity of your apartment singing or doing whatever.  Or go for a walk without needing to know where you're going or what you're looking at.  When we created the songs and videos there was a great satisfaction in it every time because we knew we were creating something truthful and powerful and there was such love in the whole process that it didn't matter to us that nobody else might get it.  We could never get bored of singing SoulJahm songs - they continued to feel new to us.

Yet we also understood the way the world is and people don't recognise what is in front of them unless it's packaged and presented attractively.  So our whole idea behind setting up a studio to record and practice was to try and take the songs to a higher level in terms of presentation.  We could quite happily have gone on forever more with just an acoustic guitar singing together but that's the dilemna - the world pressures you to DO something, BE something.  So we figured, "ok, if we must do something in this world it can only be Music because that is where our joy is".  So we did what we could to get that happening.  If a man stands on the street speaking words of Truth, no one pays attention.  If you put those same words into a book with a nice shiny cover and sell it in a book store then there is a chance it will be recognised.  This is where we were attempting to go with the studio.  Also, not to take anything away from that process itself, we recognised it would make the songs more multi-dimensional.  We could explore and bring out the rhythm, harmony and instrumentation in a way not possible acoustically.  We saw that we'd eventually have all these versions of our songs - acoustic, sparse instrumentation, full instrumentation, and so on - and people could take their pick which they preferred. 

We could think about putting together proper albums and building on that.  Not just musically, but in all the directions we felt to go into.  There were lots of ideas and as long as this Truth was at their core, that was all that mattered to us.

Now all that has come crashing down and that is part of life too.  It creates and destroys in equal measure.  But the Heart of what SoulJahm is about has not been destroyed.  The core of what we set out to do remains because Truth is Truth is Truth.  You can break it up, rearrange it, change all the circumstances but it still remains Truth.  In that sense, my work remains exactly the same.  All the circumstances have changed but as long as I am in a body I will do what I can to get this Music out.  It is like we always kept saying - we have no choice.  That is a reality.  I have no choice.  You can ask a monkey to fly like a bird over and over.  We are what we are.  Society is always interested in us being something other than what we are because then we are useful to it.  When you are just what you are and nothing else you are not useful to society because you are too ordinary.  You become a threat or a nuisance or a rebel in some way, not even by trying, just your very core has to go against the grain.  It must be that way for freedom.

It seems Phase I of SoulJahm - the first three and a half years - was all about "Preparing The Soil".  We were like farmers ploughing the land.  Now the seed has been planted it must grow.

I will not give up that there are others out there who feel the way I do and even if this Music only gets through to one individual then it has done its job.  So for now, SoulJahm Phase II starts with me back on acoustic guitar and we see where it goes from here.

Living As If There Is No Death

Ferry from Amsterdam to Edinburgh, Aug 2013

Before a new SoulJahm phase begins, I want to say a few things about the death of Kate and about the life she lived from my perspective.  I can't presume to know totally what is going on inside another human being but we shared as close a journey together as two humans could so maybe I can try and give an insight into our way of living on her behalf.  Even to call it a "way of living" is not quite right because there is no way.

The simplest way I can put it is that Kate was enjoying her life moment to moment too much to be concerned with death.  That might be too simple for some to accept but that is what I saw.  From the moment the first difficulties with her body showed up until it was no longer possible she was adamant she wanted to carry on what we were doing.  She didn't want to miss out on LIVING NOW by being side-tracked with concerns for her health.  What label you stuck on her condition was pretty much irrelevant because it was what it was in any given moment.  It wasn't that she was deliberately being reckless or ignorant, simply that she did not feel to take any action for a long time and what was going on now was all that mattered and she included in that any difficulties present in her body.  But those difficulties were not going to stop her LIVING.  She never saw or felt of herself as ill (see video below for a further explanation of this).  What I saw is that wherever we were, whatever we were doing, was the only place she wanted to be and the only thing she wanted to be doing.  There was no room for anything else.

This kind of simplicity is missed in a culture that starts from the idea death is terrible and is all about prolonging life at any cost, a culture where the quality of your life is measured in number of years not in how meaningful what you are doing now is.  We live in a society obsessed with health and the body and so it is difficult for people to see past that.  That there is a peace and joy within that can even surpass concern for the body.  It is essentially living the way any other animal lives.



I have seen too many indications now that an individual's death is somehow predestined.  Things they say or do in the years leading up to their death, and looked at in hindsight, suggest to me that on some level it is known they don't have much time left.  I don't necessarily think the individual consciously knows when they are going to die but something does and it is often reflected in their behaviour.  

Budapest, April 2011

To onlookers it might look like what Kate was doing wasn't all that special.  No big achievements, no wordly successes, no fancy career.  Surely she couldn't be happy with that?  But that is the very value system we were spotlighting all the time as false.  That's why people who achieve all those things are never happy, its never enough, they always want more.  You've got the family in place, you've got your house, your career but still you're never satisfied.  Peace and contentment comes from inside and what you do after discovering that becomes fairly irrelevant.  The paradox seems to be that when you hit upon that peace inside, your outside world begins to change and reflect that and you fall into doing something that gives you great joy without having any big intentions.  It happens quite effortlessly.

Barcelona, Sep 2011

 This is what we found in SoulJahm.  The way of it, the twists and turns, the ideas and visions around it, all happened and continue to happen totally spontaneously.  It is a living discovery.  Looked at over a period of time it might appear we planned and strived for it, and knew what we were doing, but the actual fact of living it is nothing at all like that.  Even the struggle of it becomes a joy in a way that is hard to explain.  When things got tough we'd often stop for a moment, before recognising and saying to each other "I'd still rather be doing this than anything else in this life" and we'd be back on track.  Never did I see any regret in Kate at what she'd given up to live like this.  I don't believe you can regret it once it happens but that is difficult to get across to those contrained by their own mental imprisonment.  Even in the final months, she wanted to be in this Music energy field.  It didn't matter that she wasn't actively taking part any longer, she was content just to be around it and immersed in it and nothing else would do.  Those who cannot feel that Presence will doubt that but who feels it knows it.    

Living like this can only be understood from the inside not from looking on as a bystander.   Everything was and is still being lived moment to moment without needing to know where you are going next.  That is a beautiful way to live and I would say the Highest way to live and Kate lived her last years this way.  Once the body could no longer go any further on that path there was nowhere left to go.  Now the body may be gone but the energy that is Kate is indestructible and that energy will always be part of what is here now as SoulJahm.

Jah Rastafari!

Florence, July 2011

SoulJah Colour - Kate

On the 13th May 2014, Kate Threadgould, a founding member and one half of SoulJahm, passed away.

There is a sadness that we will no longer physically share this journey alongside a joy and happiness because she put freedom above all else - a beautiful pain. Kate is the most determined, joyful and authentic woman I have had the good fortune to have known for 15 years. Three years ago the SoulJahm journey began in Budapest in an apartment block just around the corner from here so some sort of circle has been completed.

Kate is a true SoulJah who carried on in adverse conditions when anyone else would long have given up in order to lay down the foundations in Europe and bring through this Music for no other reason than loving the journey itself. She lives on as we move into a new phase together in a new way.

Jah Rastafari!

Musical Odyssey Europa

We have been asked the questions over the last few years what we are doing in Europe, why we live the way we do, how long we will go on like this, why we can't make this Music in either Australia or the UK (our places of birth), why don't we get proper jobs, when are we going to settle down...  Mostly these questions sound kind of funny and puzzling to us, like implied in the questions we are the strange ones.  If you really look at it, the questions themselves are the strange ones.

I came across something the other day which pointed out that people who pursue their passion or vision are often seen by society as self-indulgent as if the "normal" aspirations of a good education, a successful, lucrative career and marrying, settling down, having children and buying a house are somehow not selfish? 

I've often struggled to find a way to explain our reasons for being in Europe these last few years to anyone who asks.  It is not a struggle to me because I don't need to justify it to myself but it can be difficult to put into words that make sense to others.  Wondering about this reminded me of the quote from Bob Dylan in the intro to the film No Direction Home:

"I had ambitions to set out and find, like an odyssey or going home somewhere... set out to find... this home that I'd left a while back and couldn't remember exactly where it was, but I was on my way there.  And encountering what I encountered on the way was how I envisioned it all. I didn't really have any ambition at all.

I was born very far from where I'm supposed to be, and so, I'm on my way home, you know?"

For us, it's kind of like that.  I don't know exactly what Dylan means by "home" but to me it is heard not as a physical location but the centre of you - the place before your personality, your true home.  Once you identify and sit within that home you no longer need a physical home.  You need shelter, a place to stay maybe, but not a permanent home you can call your own.  When you no longer need a physical home paradoxically physical locations start to 'speak' to you.  You are drawn like a magnet to the right place at any given time.  This is how we have moved over the last 3 years.  Since countries are just illusory man-made borders, we don't travel to visit countries and "look at the bricks", as John Lennon said.  I watched an early Beatles interview recently and the Canadian interviewer had a bee in his bonnet about whether they were getting to see the sights on their travels.  John eventually got irritated by this and replied "we are here to work not to see the bricks".  That is how it is for SoulJahm.  We may not have an entourage and a proper organised tour or recording schedule but it is a kind of work.  The best kind of work.  Our boss is Jah! 

There is something familiar about the land of Europe for us.  It couldn't be anywhere else but Europe.  We are not particularly interested in the history, the sights, museums, nightlife and all that.  The vibrancy that is there NOW in any given place is all that matters.  You don't need to go anywhere or do anything in particular to feel that. 

Entwined and inseparable from this is Music.  For us they are like the land and the ocean, the soil and the seed.  We can make music anywhere but we can only make this Music in Europe and this Music is the only one we are interested in working with.

That is not necessarily an easy thing and complications will always arise and attempt to deny simplicity but they can only ever cover it up.  When your mind is clear and pure, it is very simple.  The hard part is keeping your mind clear and pure because this world is built on complication.  On this type of journey, there is only one outcome possible and so each time we fall all there is to do is get up and continue walking in the only direction we can go in. 

Another thing Bob Dylan said:

“When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it - don't back down and don't give up - then you're going to mystify a lot of folks.”  

And from Bob Marley, he said this:

"Life and Jah are one in the same. Jah is the gift of existence. I am in some way eternal, I will never be duplicated. The singularity of every man and woman is Jah’s gift. What we struggle to make of it is our sole gift to Jah. The process of what that struggle becomes, in time, the Truth"

 

"Trojan Horse" (Analogue 4-Track)

Another of the Edinburgh 4-Track recordings.  This one is called "Trojan Horse" and was written in Barcelona in September 2011 on a piano which was in the apartment we stayed.  We recorded this song while in Europe as part of the 'Sketches of Europa' collection but it remains unfinished.  So for now this is the first public recording, played together as a trio.

Studio Update

We are currently in a period of transition, ready to move on into the next phase of SoulJahm.  For the last 2 - 3 years we have worked to get this Music out, often under adverse conditions in all areas of life.  In May this year we began to feel we'd taken it as far as we could go under those conditions.  Recording with one budget microphone, a laptop that was on it's last legs and few instruments, we managed to put out a collection of songs and videos to introduce SoulJahm.

The studio taking shape in its temporary home...

Now we must take it further and we are in the process of putting together a small home studio where we can work and create in a more favourable environment for the foreseeable future.  Thanks to some good people around us, we have spent the last month or so acquiring equipment and have the studio itself ready and waiting to go.  It is now only a matter of finding the right space to set-up in and begin.  Berlin or Budapest look to be the main contenders but we will go anywhere we're moved so long as it is for the benefit of this Music.

Testing...

Analogue 4-Track Version of "Mysterious"

While having a bit of a jam a few weeks ago, we experimented with recording this song on an old 4-track tape machine. We played acoustic guitar, bass and percussion live together in the room and then overdubbed electric guitar, some more percussion and finally vocals. All of this was recorded to tape - no editing - and then we stuck it all on the computer. It is pretty much the sound we make in a room at the moment. We recorded two more songs this way from the same session which might go up here in the coming weeks.